ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

book review

  • BOOK REVIEW: Dracula the Undead by Freda Warrington

    My tendency here so far at ClimbingSky has been to review books, short stories, and poems that I like. But as an indiscriminate reader that is probably not practical. When you add in the fact that I am also a fan of anything to do with Bram Stokers’s Dracula (not necessarily vampires per se), it Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Cannery Row” by John Steinbeck

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on April 26, 2020. When I was in 8th and 9th grade (50 years ago now!) I read a lot of John Steinbeck. Everything the small Broadwater County Library had. The library. which was cramped Read more

  • Choosing What to Read

    I have admitted here before that I am an “Indiscriminate Reader.” I read what catches my fancy. And if the book is free, even better. I routinely pick up any Kindle freebies that catch my eye. Over the years, I have found some very enjoyable reads that way. And, to be fair, some very dreadful Read more

  • Book Review: Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

    I have reached a place in my reading life where I am trying to fill-in some gaps. Reading some of the classic writers and books deemed important or foundational that I have not yet got around to reading. Anthony Trollope is one such writer. After his death, Henry James, who was not always a fan, Read more

  • Green Hills of Africa, by Ernest Hemingway

    “A thousand years makes economics silly and a work of art endures for ever, but it is very difficult to do and now it is not fashionable.”― Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa There remain hundreds of books on my reading “to do” list, yet sometimes I find myself re-reading an old favorite. With poetry this is Read more

  • Powers of Darkness by Bram Stoker & Valdimar Ásmundsson

    In 2017, right after it was published, I read the book Powers of Darkness. Powers of Darkness is a Icelandic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1899. It was published anonymously in a newspaper and credited to Stoker and an unidentified author. While it shares the same main character, it differs significantly from the original, adding new characters Read more

  • The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

    I am currently working through Stephen King’s The Shining. It is a book I have started before but have never gotten very far into. I am giving it another try right now because I will be spending Thanksgiving this year in Estes Park and at the Stanley Hotel. The Stanley is the real-life inspiration for Read more

  • This House is Haunted by John Boyne

    The Literary Ghost Story is a noble tradition: The “Signal-Man” and Dickens play an important role John Boyne’s novel This House is Haunted.  It is a well-written “Victorian” ghost story featuring London fog, numerous literary references, and a mysterious country manor. Before the arbitrary distinctions of genre vs. literary fiction, many great writers tried their hand at Read more

  • The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

    Like all genres, Horror runs the spectrum from great writing to less-than-great writing. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill falls squarely in the former category in every possible way. The novel is narrated by Arthur Kipps, who is recalling a terrifying experience from his past. Many years earlier, while working as a junior solicitor, Read more

  • Friday’s Food for Thought: Virginia Woolf

    Happy Friday! Here is a quote by Virginia Woolf to carry into your weekend. There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson’s Life of Gray which might well be written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people. Read more